Asteroid Detection Negative Contents


Asteroid Impact =/= threat



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Asteroid Impact =/= threat



The only likely asteroids to hit us would break up in the atmosphere and not harm anyone

Leifert 08 (Harvey, freelance science writer, “Asteroid impacts and climate change: which is the greater threat?”, December 19th, 2008, accessed 7/3/11, AH)

What do Boston, London, New York, Frankfurt, San Francisco, and Paris have in common? They have all been destroyed by asteroid impacts—in the movies. The death toll was enormous in every case. Understandably, people are worried that such a catastrophe might actually occur within their lifetime. Actually, says climate scientist Mark B. Boslough, “if you’re going to stay up late at night worrying about something, worry about climate.” Boslough, a researcher at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US, says, “you are much more likely to die from climate change than from an asteroid impact by a factor of something like a thousand.” He presented his findings at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California. Boslough cannot put a precise number on that ratio, because climate science is still replete with gaps in the relevant data. He is much more confident about the asteroid threat, though. He says that there is no evidence that anyone has died from an asteroid or meteorite impact—ever. He does not make a distinction between asteroids and meteors, saying the latter are basically fragments of the former and there is no size boundary to distinguish one from the other. Looking at worst case scenarios for asteroid impacts and climate change over the next 100 years, Boslough estimates that the largest asteroid to impact Earth would be around 50 metres in diameter. It would explode in the atmosphere and not make an impact crater, he says, and it would kill no one. Asteroids larger than 50 metres across and likely to cross Earth’s orbit are rare, and the larger they are, the rarer they are. They are also well tracked. Smaller ones are more numerous, but even less likely to cause death and destruction on Earth. Scientists can make the same kind of probability study with regard to climate change, Boslough says, “but the nature of the problem is very different.” Climate modelers do not have sufficient data to construct high resolution models, he says, including such key questions as: what are the relevant feedbacks? And how do aerosols (fine particles) affect the formation of clouds? The best approach at present, he says, is to use an ensemble of models to produce an estimate of the consequences, including fatalities, for a given degree of climate change. Still, even with the present uncertainties, Boslough says, the World Health Organisation estimates that 150,000 people per year will die from warming at the current rate, compared with none from asteroid impacts. Boslough acknowledges a perception gap among the general public, thanks to the media, which he says commonly focuses on “exceptionally unlikely impact scenarios.” When climate scientists talk about worst case scenarios, he says, “often times they are portrayed as alarmist. When we in the asteroid impact business talk about big impacts, like the ones depicted in the movies, no one ever accuses us of being alarmist.” He hopes his analysis of the relative threats of both impact and climate will help put both threats into perspective.
Asteroids kill, at most, 91 people a year. 85% of all asteroids capable of causing global catastrophe have been tracked and none are going to hit Earth within 100 years.

Foust 10 [Jeff, Aerospace analyst journalist and publisher of The Space Review, The Space Review, “Death from the skies? Ho- Hum,” January 25, 2010, SM, accessed: 7/11/11, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1550/1]

Even if those risks were effectively communicated to the public in some manner, though, it’s not clear it would increase support for more active NEO searches. A table in the report notes that the expected average annual deaths from asteroids worldwide is just 91. (That doesn’t mean that 91 people are killed every year by asteroid impacts—there have been no “significant” deaths in recorded history, the report notes—but that is the average when the potential deaths from infrequent but catastrophic impacts are taken into account.) That is orders of magnitude lower than other causes of death that many people rarely think about on a daily basis, from firearms accidents (25,000 per year) to malaria (1 million) to air pollution (2 million). Much of that estimated death rate comes not from smaller objects but instead larger NEOs greater than one kilometer across, big enough to cause a global catastrophe. So far about 85 percent of the predicted population of such larger NEOs has been detected, and none of them pose an impact threat to the Earth for at least the next century. (When that isn’t taken into account, the average annual death toll jumps to over 1,000.) The other bump in the mortality curve comes from very small objects, less than 100 meters across: less energetic but more frequent, and whose populations hasn’t been well characterized.



Asteroid Impact =/= threat



Asteroids don’t matter - Impacts are too small or too improbable

Bennett 10 (James Bennett is an Eminent Scholar and William P. Snavely Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at George Mason University, and Director of The John M. Olin Institute for Employment Practice and Policy, “The Chicken Littles of Big Science; or, Here Come the Killer Asteroids!” The Doomsday Lobby, 164-166. TDA)

The smallest falling bodies, those with diameters under a few meters, are of “no practical concern,” says Chapman, and in fact they are to be desired, at least by those who keep their eyes on the skies watching for brilliant fireballs whose burning up in the atmosphere provides a show far more spectacular than the most lavish Fourth of July fireworks. Even bodies with diameters of 10–30 meters, of which Chapman estimates six may fall to earth in a century, cause little more than broken windows. They explode too high in the atmosphere to cause serious harm. The next largest potential strikers of Earth are those in the Tunguska range of 30 meters–100 meters. The shock waves from the atmospheric explosion would “topple trees, wooden structures and ignit[e] fires within 10 kilometers,” writes Chapman. Human deaths could result if the explosion took place over a populated area. Though Chapman estimates the likelihood of a Tunguska occurring in any given century at four in ten, it is worth noting that there is no evidence that such an explosion has killed a single human being in all of recorded history. Either we’re overdue or that 40 percent is high. Moreover, given that the location of such an explosion is utterly unpredictable, it would be far more likely to happen over an ocean or a desert than over, say, Tokyo or Manhattan. The after effects would be minimal, and Chapman says that “nothing practical can be done about this modest hazard other than to clean up after the event.” In fact, “It makes no sense to plan ahead for such a modest disaster… other than educating the public about the possibility.” The cost of a telescopic survey capable of picking up bodies of such diminutive size would be prohibitive. It would be the ultimate Astronomers Full Employment Act. A body of 100 meters–300 meters in diameter would either explode at low altitude or upon impact with the ground; it would be “regionally devastating,” but Chapman pegs the chances of such a catastrophe at 1 percent per century. A small nation could be destroyed by the impact of a body of 300 meters—1 km in diameter, or a “flying mountain” of sorts, which would explode with energy yield ten times more than “the largest thermonuclear bomb ever tested.” If striking land, it would carve out a crater deeper than the Grand Canyon. If it hit a populated area, the death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands. The likelihood of such a collision Chapman estimates at 0.2 percent per century. An asteroid or comet of 1–3 kilometers in diameter would cause “major regional destruction,” possibly verging on “civilization-destruction level.” Chapman puts the chances of this at 0.02 percent per century. The impact of a body more than 3 kilometers in diameter might plunge the Earth into a new Dark Age, killing most of its inhabitants, though the chances of this are “extremely remote” — less than one in 50,000 per century. Finally, mass extinction would likely occur should a body greater than 10 kilometers pay us a visit, though the chances of this are less than one in a million every century, or so infinitesimal that even the most worry-wracked hypochondriac will not lose sleep over the possibility. In fact, for any impact with a Chapman-calculated likelihood of less than one in a thousand per century, he concedes that there is “little justification for mounting asteroid-specific mitigation measures.” The chance of a civilization-ender is so remote that he counsels no “advance preparations” — or almost none. For Chapman recommends further study of NEOs, as well as investigation into methods of their diversion. 82 This is exactly what the NEO lobby wants.



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